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The Purse-Part1_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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to feel free from want, and to use his own expression, was

enjoying his last privations. Instead of going to his work in one



of the studios near the city gates, where the moderate rents had

hitherto been in proportion to his humbleearnings, he had



gratified a wish that was new every morning, by sparing himself a

long walk, and the loss of much time, now more valuable than



ever.

No man in the world would have inspired feelings of greater



interest than Hippolyte Schinner if he would ever have consented

to make acquaintance; but he did not lightlyentrust to others



the secrets of his life. He was the idol of a necessitous mother,

who had brought him up at the cost of the severest privations.



Mademoiselle Schinner, the daughter of an Alsatian farmer, had

never been married. Her tender soul had been cruelly crushed,



long ago, by a rich man, who did not pride himself on any great

delicacy in his love affairs. The day when, as a young girl, in



all the radiance of her beauty and all the triumph of her life,

she suffered, at the cost of her heart and her sweet illusions,



the disenchantment which falls on us so slowly and yet so

quickly--for we try to postpone as long as possible our belief in



evil, and it seems to come too soon--that day was a whole age of

reflection, and it was also a day of religious thought and



resignation. She refused the alms of the man who had betrayed

her, renounced the world, and made a glory of her shame. She gave



herself up entirely to her motherly love, seeking in it all her

joys in exchange for the social pleasures to which she bid



farewell. She lived by work, saving up a treasure for her son.

And, in after years, a day, an hour repaid her amply for the long



and weary sacrifices of her indigence.

At the last exhibition her son had received the Cross of the



Legion of Honor. The newspapers, unanimous in hailing an unknown

genius, still rang with sincere praises. Artists themselves



acknowledged Schinner as a master, and dealers covered his

canvases with gold pieces. At five-and-twenty Hippolyte Schinner,



to whom his mother had transmitted her woman's soul, understood

more clearly than ever his position in the world. Anxious to



restore to his mother the pleasures of which society had so long

robbed her, he lived for her, hoping by the aid of fame and



fortune to see her one day happy, rich, respected, and surrounded

by men of mark. Schinner had therefore chosen his friends among



the most honorable and distinguished men. Fastidious in the

selection of his intimates, he desired to raise still further a



position which his talent had placed high. The work to which he

had devoted himself from boyhood, by compelling him to dwell in



solitude--the mother of great thoughts--had left him the

beautiful beliefs which grace the early days of life. His



adolescent soul was not closed to any of the thousand bashful

emotions by which a young man is a being apart, whose heart



abounds in joys, in poetry, in virginal hopes, puerile in the

eyes of men of the world, but deep because they are single-



hearted.

He was endowed with the gentle and polite manners which speak to



the soul, and fascinate even those who do not understand them. He

was well made. His voice, coming from his heart, stirred that of



others to noble sentiments, and bore witness to his true modesty

by a certain ingenuousness of tone. Those who saw him felt drawn



to him by that attraction of the moral nature which men of

science are happily unable to analyze; they would detect in it



some phenomenon of galvanism, or the current of I know not what

fluid, and express our sentiments in a formula of ratios of



oxygen and electricity.

These details will perhaps explain to strong-minded persons and



to men of fashion why, in the absence of the porter whom he had

sent to the end of the Rue de la Madeleine to call him a coach,



Hippolyte Schinner did not ask the man's wife any questions

concerning the two women whose kindness of heart had shown itself



in his behalf. But though he replied Yes or No to the inquiries,

natural under the circumstances, which the good woman made as to






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